The campus response to Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 shocked most observers, including those who perceived the conduct to be deeply reminiscent of conduct at German universities in the 1930s. Many Americans wonder what happened to our universities, giving rise to anti-Semitic riots and similar acts of violence, and the reluctance of university trustees, presidents, and faculty to condemn them. I started to wonder if this was the case. Although many see his 1960s radicalism as a turning point, the real turning point was the transformation of higher education in the decades following the Civil War.
The United States was founded on the principles that all human beings have exclusive ownership of themselves, their freedom, and their property, and that government is responsible only for the protection of human beings. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War were fought to protect the natural rights of all people. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, faculty and leaders at this country’s colleges and universities agreed to teach and hopefully instill these principles into the next generation. One example is Brown University’s anti-slavery president Francis Weyland, an uncompromising defender of natural rights and limited government. His textbook Elements of Moral Science, first published in 1835, sold more than 200,000 copies in the 19th century, according to the university.
Today, a typical higher education institution resembles a denominational church whose doctrine rejects its American philosophical origins.
Everything began to change in the 1870s, when American universities decided to transform into replicas of German universities, which were widely regarded as the most advanced institutions of higher education in the world. This was certainly the case in mathematics, empirical science, and medicine. However, the social sciences and humanities were morally and empirically inferior to their American counterparts.
German professors and administrators considered themselves weapons of the state, and they were. In the American understanding of the term, they see citizens as having no “natural” (i.e., pre-legal) rights, but only government-given privileges and duties to obey their political superiors. I did.
These nationalist doctrines were taught to hundreds of Americans who studied at German universities and upon their return to the United States decided to instill them here.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the concepts of natural rights and liberties, and the limited role of government in protecting them, were explicitly rejected by the country’s social science and humanities faculty. Charles Edward Merriam, who founded the political science department at the University of Chicago, described the consensus among his fellow scholars in 1903, saying that “the individualistic ideas of the ‘natural rights’ school of political theory” were “discredited.” Lost and denied,” he wrote. ” Instead, he quoted John W. Burgess, founder of Columbia University’s doctoral program, who said, “The state is the source of individual freedom.”
The first German-trained Americans and their students understood that it was no rudimentary to characterize themselves in the same way as their teachers, that is, as National Socialists. Instead, they borrowed the name “Progressive” from the German Progressive Party. This was a feel-good word that allowed them to avoid fully explaining their views, especially in public.
After World War I, when Germany became anathema to many Americans, progressives adopted a new self-description: liberal. When New Dealers adopted the term for themselves, the famous former progressive columnist Walter Lippmann, in his book The Good Society, more accurately described the New Deal as fascist, calling it a former ideological It shocked my fellow countrymen.
For decades, the philosophy and practices underlying today’s American universities have become eerily similar to their authoritarian and racist ancestors in 19th- and 20th-century Germany.
In the 1950s, survey after survey confirmed that the typical American university had become a “one-party” campus, with liberals outnumbering conservatives and libertarians at an abnormally high rate. It was done. For example, a 2016 study of faculty voter registration at 40 major U.S. universities published in Economic Journal Watch.
Overall, 3,623 people reported being registered as Democrats and 314 as Republicans. The Democratic-to-Republican ratio in economics was 4.5 to 1, in history 33.5 to 1, in journalism 20 to 1, in law 8.6 to 1, and in psychology 17.4 to 1.
More recently, a 2022 survey by the student newspaper Harvard Crimson found that 80% of liberal arts and science faculty “characterized their political leanings as ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal,'” while others “characterized their political leanings as ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal.’ Only 1% of respondents answered. They were “conservative” and no respondents identified as “very conservative.” ”
Today, a typical higher education institution resembles a denominational church whose doctrine rejects the philosophical origins of the nation. Because faculty have the exclusive power to not only train but also select successors, students have assimilated faculty opinions and transformed the media, the constitution, and one of the two major political parties.
Still, no one warned the country.
In August 1883, the renowned German historian Herbert Tuttle of Cornell University wrote in the Atlantic Monthly about Americans receiving doctorates in social sciences from German universities and appointments at American universities. He explained that the theory of government that they learned abroad was “premised on the ignorance of individuals and the omniscience of the government.” Furthermore, the government is “as far removed as possible” from the influence of elected representatives and public opinion.
If America’s academic “pilgrims are faithful disciples of their master,” they become “defenders of our political system, which, if adopted and literally carried out, will completely imbue the spirit of our system.” and destroy all the oldest ones,” Tuttle concluded. and the most sublime of our natural lives. ”
In Germany, this idea of an omniscient government dominated universities from the early 19th century and ultimately led to Nazism in the 20th century. What political fate will that bring for America?
Editor’s note: This article isAmerica’s Second Civil War Victory”, published by Encounter Books on Tuesday.
